Burnout is one of the most common issues plaguing students at Berkeley High School and across high schools in general. More specifically, a very peculiar subtype of burnout \u2014 which occurs every year without fail between the months of January and June and only affects those heading out of the school \u2014 has just begun its yearly visit: senioritis. The word “senioritis” is most often heard in teachers\u2019 complaints and student\u2019s excuses, yet many teachers do little to regulate it, and many students have given up on fighting it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI noticed that (seniors) are more lethargic, tired. They tend to complain more about work that I assign and, (to) all their other teachers as well, they talk about how senior teachers are doing too much, even though we’re literally doing the same amount that we did from first semester,\u201d AP Literature and American Literature teacher Ashley Cunningham said. \u201cNothing’s changed on the teacher’s end, my seniors are done. They’re over it and they don’t want to engage in schoolwork even though they still have to.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cunningham is one of many senior teachers who have noticed the distinct decline in students’ inclination to produce quality work on time after the stressful college application season, which generally ends right after winter break. \u201cI see a lot less quality work Spring semester, especially the beginning of Spring semester. I see a lot of students half-assing their assignments or ChatGPTing a lot of the time in my room,\u201d Cunningham said. \u201cI feel like there’s a lot less engaging in the actual work and it’s more like them (saying), \u2018Okay, I just have to get this done and out of the way and turn it in.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Senior students have also begun to recognize their own pattern of senioritis in their work ethic and academic skills. After trudging through three and a half years of debilitating classwork, homework, and extracurricular activities, many seniors feel that they have earned the right to be more hands off with their schoolwork. \u201cIt just feels like, now that I’m done with applying to colleges, there’s not as much of an incentive to do schoolwork and to go to school. Especially now that I’m starting to get accepted to places,\u201d Sarah Marsh, a BHS senior in AC, said. \u201cIt feels like I don’t really have to prove anything with my grades. It makes them feel like they don’t matter quite as much.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Marsh is one of many AC students who, following the submission of their college applications, have decided to let senioritis take the wheel. Seniors in other small schools, such as BIHS, tend to have a very different second semester experience ahead of them. With IA deadlines being just around the corner \u2014 \u201cinternal assessment\u201d projects that students must complete for each class they have in the International Baccalaureate (IB) program \u2014 and because much of IA work is done outside of school, BIHS seniors around January and February sometimes find themselves skipping class to work on their IA\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u201cSome people skip because they don’t have a lot of work to do, but I feel like in BIHS people skip because they have a lot of work to do and they need to get it done,\u201d BIHS senior Liam Buffington said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After the strenuous college application process, many senior students feel that they have earned the right to slack off and enjoy their last few months of high school, a perspective that some BHS teachers share to some extent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it’s normal for students, I think it would be a fool’s errand to try to shut something like that down. It would just end in animosity between students and teachers right before students are about to leave,\u201d Sydney Aardal, a BHS AP Biology and Anatomy and Physiology teacher, said. Teachers at BHS sometimes take a gentler approach to pushing seniors back into doing their work \u2014 such as through encouragement and engaging assignments \u2014 though it can often be unsuccessful. \u201cGiving them a little bit of love and reminding them that they just have to get to the end of the line is really important,\u201d Aardal said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Burnout is one of the most common issues plaguing students at Berkeley High School and across high schools…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":{"0":"post-196290","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-oakland","9":"tag-oakland-headlines","10":"tag-oakland-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}